Unseen Eyes
Lust and power are so often the same thing to a simple mind, the lust for wealth brings with it an irrevocable drive for power to further that lust in a cycle that warps the very reality around it. It was a venerable dream that had clasped to the very being of humanity since they were nought but primitives trapped to a single landscape within a single world, it had signalled the beginnings of greatest for some and the great fall into the forgotten annuals of history for others. It was a part of humanity as much as one’s own limbs and was to be embraced by the soul of every man and women living in this decrepit ruin of a failed dream, mountains of technology lost to the very souls that inhabited it. At least that was what Sarak had been constantly jabbering on about ever since they had left the hide earlier that morning, combing through the under crofts of the agri-dome for any signs of easy marks amongst the groups that had been sighted coming in and out from the dome above. “Bunch of Slacks if you ask me, nothing in there but worthless green” Calk Grunted from behind him, slipping under a collapsed beam as they moved up through the tunnel further into the support structure. Hes rolled his eyes at the comment as he side stepped a steady stream of oily liquid coming from above that was pooling on the tunnel floor in a wide shimmering lake, Calk marching through it in a great splash of liquid as his boot soles slammed down as Sarak continued on with his muttering in front of them both. “Do you ever shut up?” Mesk called from up ahead where he had paused; the light from his mounted torch skittered along the floor and walls, as he looked back at them “Who gives a flying mute about Power, I’m in this for one thing and one thing only” Mesk stood up and clicked his neck revealing a large gasping skull tattoo covering the side of his neck and lower jaw, “Creds” Sarak sneered as he past Mesk, Calk barking with laughter at Mesk’s single digit response. Hes clicked his jaw as he ignored them and pushed past the other 3 heading further down the tunnel to where a pile of collapsed girders & sparking cables had blocked the tunnel leaving a gap in the roof. “If you’re finished whinging amongst one another we’ve got a job to do” Hes called over his shoulder, aiming his pistol up at the hole, before looking round at the other 3 as they wondered up to him. “Mesk get up there and clear us a space, Sarak you go with and help him” Mesk and Sarak muttered something under their breath as they clambered up to the hole and wormed their way up through it, loosing a torrent of metallic debris back down into the tunnel as Calk followed their progress from Hes’s shoulder. A few minutes of silence passed with nothing but the sound of clattering debris dropping down and the odd swear from either Mesk or Sarak up in the hole, Calk tapping one foot in impatience behind Hes before eventually yelling up into the whole with no reply. Calk yelled again before Hes silenced him, cocking his side arm and aiming it up into the hole, “You two better not be messing with us” Hes called up, gesturing for Calk to clamber up and into the hole in the tunnel roof. Calk slung his shotgun over his shoulder and hauled himself up into the hole, disappearing up the hole with a deluge of obscenity as to the origin of Sarak’s mother. Again after a few minutes even Calk’s voice tapered off into nothing, something was seriously going wrong with what should have been an easy run for Hes’s crew he thought to himself holstering his pistol and climbing up into the hole to follow after the now 3 silent other bandits. The hole itself clearly was not man made by the burnt marks and rips in the metal work Hes thought as he wormed his way through the structure, gripping onto bundles of cabling for hand holds as he worked his way up until eventually hauling himself out of the top onto a hard cold metallic floor, a single source of light illuminating a pile of crates about 30 metres away. Hes looked round for Calk and the others in the eerily silence but to no avail in the almost pitch darkness before crossing over to the single small light source ahead of him. Crouching down the light was the torch from Calks shotgun “What the…” Hes stood up straight as he noticed that he was surrounded in a neat semi-circle by the bodies of Sarak, Mesk and Calk, all lying face down if they’d each had anything remaining above their shoulders. “How…” Hes breathed wiping round as a figure materialised behind him, the muzzle of its side arm pressed lightly against his forehead for just a micro-second as a metallic squeezed down on the trigger, reducing Hes’s face and skull to pulp as the hyper charged round punched clean through his crudely maintained rig shielding and sliced through Hes’s flesh. “Four times tertiary target’s eliminated” The creature breathed into a crafted radio system mounted into what would have been its throat, “Confirm package located and secured, priority one Recovery”. It stepped over the bandits freshly slain corpses, its head swivelling in the motion of a one attuned to an augmentically inlaid holographic display, “Location logged for primus control and extraction, proximity to organic units logged for dispersal under Authorised Node control”. The Arbiter turned reactivating its infiltration rig, its outline shimmering before dissolving into the darkness from whence it came… Summary: So it would seem a store of something has been located in the bowels beneath the Agri-dome by some short lived Bandits, and the arbiters have taken an interest with regards to the various cultures activities during their first foray into the dome itself. The outcome of what exactly this store may have contained is yet to be known but it is extremely likely that the arbiters will want to talk with the various cultures during the next excursions into the dome and some form of deal may have to be struck. Back to Downtimes